The YouTube&nbspExperiment

This YouMoz entry was submitted by one of our community members. The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding an unlikely case of hypnosis) and may not reflect the views of Moz.

When I first suggested setting up a YouTube channel for our videos, I got a lot of sneers at the office. YouTube gets a bad rap (compared to a good rap) around our office. It’s probably because we’ve been soured by the comparisons between it and Wistia for business video hosting.

But for now, let’s ignore the comparisons between the two and focus on this question: can YouTube be used in conjunction with a pro-hosting solution as part of a broad video marketing strategy?

The answer we have historically given to this question is, “sure, what’s the harm?” Host the videos on your site with a professional service, but also put them on the Tube in the hopes that you’ll get some free traffic from there. We honestly thought this strategy made a lot of sense (not to mention we didn’t want to force clients to have to choose between using Wistia and putting videos on YouTube) but we had never actually implemented the strategy for ourselves.

The experiment:
We set up a channel on YouTube, posted 11 of our more popular videos, and added titles, descriptions, and tags to make the videos findable. That was over two months ago and now we’re ready to share some results and explain what we’ve learned.

The short story:
This approach didn’t work for us and we’re taking the channel down.

The long story:

The views don’t just arrive on their own.

Perhaps the main reason it’s attractive to put videos on YouTube from a marketing perspective is the sheer volume of its audience. Earlier this year, YouTube surpassed 4 billion daily video views! It’s also the second largest search engine after Google itself. With so many views and searches, surely, we thought, we’ll be able to capture some attention.

So how’d our videos do? After two months, our 11 videos have a combined 202 views. Yikes. That’s an average of about 0.3 views per video per day. To be clear, we didn’t do active promotion of these videos on YouTube, but the result is telling in terms of the likelihood of our content being found on its own. This also helps us frame the cost-benefit discussion that continues below.

Which videos to promote?

As we thought about ways to get more views on YouTube, we had to stop and ask ourselves, “what’s the advantage of promoting these videos on YouTube when we could be promoting the version on our site?” Like most things, there is a trade-off here:

On the one hand, an advantage of getting more YouTube views is that your success can actually snowball. If your video gets a lot of views it will show up more often within YouTube searches and as “related video” – think of it as SEO exclusively for within YouTube. This is a clear advantage that you can’t get any other way besides putting your video on the Tube. For this to pay dividends, however, your video has to be good enough to get the process jump-started, and the content has to be something people are actually searching for on YouTube. We consulted the YT Keyword Tool to help us evaluate how much searching is going on for content like ours. Here are the results we got for the terms video marketing, video hosting and video strategy:

The message here is that YouTube may be the second largest search engine, but we have to be realistic about what people are and are not searching for when they’re using YouTube.

On the other side of the promotion discussion, the advantage of getting views on our site rather than YouTube is that we have much more control over the experience and those viewers are one step closer to converting into a customer when on our site. It’s important to note here that there’s nothing more inherently shareable about a YouTube link than one from your site (especially if your video has social sharing buttons!). Posts to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn all act the same regardless of where your video lives – you’re just sharing a link after all. For our video content, this argument generally wins out over promoting a video on YouTube, but it’s important to at least consider the trade-off.

SEO costs of putting videos on YouTube

In addition to the importance of where a viewer is watching your video, there are also SEO issues that need to be considered when evaluating where to place your videos:

1. Building domain strength via video links

Getting video links is a powerful way to build domain strength for SEO purposes, but getting links on a YouTube version of a video primarily helps the YouTube domain ranking and not the video creator/owner. On the other hand, if you self-host and build a video sitemap (or have a pro host like Wistia take care of it for you) your site gets credit for all of the domain strengthening link juice. Because of this, when someone shares links for a YouTube version of a video that is also on our site, we're actually missing an opportunity to move up in the organic search results. (And for clarification, the domain benefit in this case comes from us being the video creator, rather than the video host -- if you use the exact same embed type your domain would receive the credit -- sorry, a bit confusing because we are both the creator and host in my tale!)

2. Video results in search engines

A YouTube copy of a video will also compete directly with a self-hosted or pro-hosted version in video search results (in Google, Bing, etc). If you are hoping to drive additional traffic to your website via video results, a YouTube version of a video that appears above the one on your site is not ideal. Building your own video sitemap (which is possible using Wistia’s tools) helps your website version appear in the results, but getting it to outrank a YouTube version is never a guarantee.

Also, Google generally frowns upon "duplicate content" (i.e. the exact same content appearing on multiple pages on multiple domains). Basically, showing the same content multiple times in the same search results isn't valuable and takes up space that could go to a piece of content that may be valuable. Having the same video both on YouTube and your website sets us up for a potential duplicate content battle with YouTube. Let's just say it's not a battle that many can win.

And so, after a two month experiment, we will soon be taking down the Wistia YouTube channel and be heading back to the drawing board in terms of a YouTube strategy. For us, the benefit of a few extra video views doesn’t outweigh the SEO costs. And while we could definitely increase the views with active promotion, we would almost always prefer to drive traffic to the videos on our site.

That said, I would urge you to try the experiment for yourself because your videos might get a tons of views on YouTube in which case the calculus is very different. There’s also a case to be made for producing content specifically for YouTube, taking into account what people are looking for, as opposed to just posting videos that were made for an entirely different purpose. That’s something we didn’t do for this first try, and it will be on our brainstorming list for potential next approaches.

This was our experience – yours may differ, and if it does we’d love to hear about it!

Good post, Wistia and Youtube, both got their own advantages, much of the stuff about video optimization was covered in a recent post at SEOMoz, I would like to link it back here for those who missed it:

Missed this one, thank's. Found it to be a tad off that they only got 202 views in two month's. Personally have created about 34 video's for a company and recieved a ton of traffic for those video's from organic results. These video's have also created sales for the past year and a half and continue to remain strong as part of the video campaign. The audiance has to be the problem with Wistia not getting much traffic or leads from the YouTube site. I also figure it this way, if you have some visits it is still a possible lead.

Do not think Wistia should remove the YouTube profile for several reason's. Should keep it up and re-think what went wrong and fix it. Interesting study, may be they should have someone else come in and provide some input... Not trying to dog Wistia, but outside input would bring about a new perspective.

Thanks for this article, it's exact what I think about youtube (and tell our customers) over the last two years or longer. Especially in Germany (I don't know the US market, sorry) we can see no ROI for Youtube-Promotions. In our experience the users are mostly looking for funny videos or How-do-I Content. I can not post any customer channels here, but I can give you a very good example: my own (NOT optimized channel!) which is *funny* the best SEOchannel in Germany if you look at this http://www.tagseoblog.de/seo-channels-bei-youtube

But the best "horse in stable" is a video of a friend of mine what I made at a "Bavarian Lunch" and it's called "Bavarian Music":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXYvemhbdGc

It's not at all monetized (hey, why?), the website could be better (I know), but it's funny :)

In my opinion this views exactly what Youtube is for: if you can get ROI out of funny and timeless things -> do it - if you want to brand something AND if you have enough time. But not more. The visits are minimal, the users are watching the video on Youtube and thats it. It needs a lot of time to get high (or up?) on youtube, so it's not a choice for a short-time-campaign (without ADs).

YouTube is not a search engine. No one goes there for general queries. It might have the second largest amount of search volume, but then again Amazon, ebay and others never talk about their search volume.

That doesn't make youtube a search engine. Once I land on Amazon looking for a book I search for more books. I search ebay for more sport memoribilia and I search craigslist for project bikes to work on.

YouTube is a video hosting website with an internal search engine, it is not a search engine with video hosting. I think it's an important distinction that people are missing. It is the intent of the website that defines what it is, and YouTube's intent is not to display documents matching a query therefore it is NOT a search engine.

A search engine is a website whose intent is to find and display documents matching a query

A video hosting website is a website whose intent is to display videos. Adding internal search doesnt override that core, it just adds functionality.

Is there a large volume of searches on YouTube? of course, just like any large website with internal search. I bet craigslist, ebay, amazon and even walmart.com get a large chunk. Should we begin ranking those website up against Google, Bing, Yahoo? What about Travel and Real Estate search verticals? Why are those never mentioned in the same breath as YouTube when vying for search volume? You think Rent.com or Travelocity don't have a large volume of searches performed each year?

I use both YouTube and Wistia. For videos that go in blog posts, I publish the video to YouTube and link back to the blog post with the video in Wistia. The blog post contains additional content, so it is clear to the viewer who clicks through from YouTube which is the better area to follow.

I can also see the case for just using YouTube for videos in blog posts, especially if you have a large RSS following, as YouTube videos play in Google Reader.

Where Wistia excels for me is the analytics portion and the embed code builder. I merge the persons email into the Wistia analytics. I can then start to understand the path of video consumption that leads to a sale on a customer by customer basis. By breaking those customers up into target users, I can figure out the buy path for each of my target user groups.

In short, I use YouTube for free publicity... even if I get a couple of hundred extra videos, it is still worth it to me. Wistia for videos that I want to track the performance of, so as to improve my messaging.

Personally I use YouTube for some elements of campaigns and Wistia for others.

YouTube advertising in targeted campaigns is cheap as mince and consequently a perfect way to complete any TV advertising you have going on.

How you use YouTube does depend on your sector and brand personality - viral content that's a bit risque probably won't suit a bank. I think the gaming sector probably does quite well on YouTube in terms of support (how to get past XX onto the next level) and product releases. My kids will go to YouTube for both of these functions.

As already mentioned, use YouTube to target YouTube users. Use a professional hosting platform to attract users via other channels or to complement other content on your site. To do this carefully plan the use of content and allocate relevant (but different) keywords to the different platforms.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained...except knowledge. Thank you for sharing this insight to your experiment. In a community it is impertant to share experiences with what doesn't work as well as what does.

Does Wistia allow you to post commercials in your videos? I have a friend that needs to host video, but the sponsors change over time, so he doesn't want the same commercial to be in the video all of the time. He wants to be able to change the commercials that are displayed in the videos when he needs to.

I host my vids on youtube for general SEO purposes. All my search phrases, whether on Google or Youtube have small volume since I have a localized niche market. I can sometimes get my youtube video to rank above my other content.

Do your videos hosted on your own domain via Wistia have that same advantage?

'advantage' is a rough term. do you get much ROI out of youtube? what is your CTR? revenue per video? in short unless you aim to make a million off of view counts or do some brand building YT isn't that great of a place. Instead you should be selfhosting / private hosting and using video sitemaps.

When you set up video SEO using Wistia, once indexed, your videos will have the opportunity to show up in SERPs with the thumbnail image and your domain as where the video is hosted. When the searcher clicks the link, they will be taken directly to the page on your site where the video is embedded.

Here is an example of what it looks like in results when everything is working correctly: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=snap+pack+mailer

There is nothing magic about YouTube but it's an amazing place to be, real businesses use YouTube for research and how-to videos. Our small business gets about 1.5 million website views a year and YouTube is the #2 referring site and the #1 most valuable referring site.

Social Media means new reach

YouTube is like PR, Facebook or an email campain, it should just be one of a dozen things you do to bring in new people. To me the SEO arugments and bringing people back to your site arguments would be like saying you should not be on Twitter and Facebook either. Always bring people back to your site reguardless of the medium. Using Video Sitemaps and good video SEO practices will make your YouTube videos rank very well on SERPS. Just as good as any embedded player.

I suggest that all SEO's read this new article:

http://www.reelseo.com/embedded-youtube-indexed-google/

Advertising on YouTube is crazy cheap

It's a very cheap place to advertise and that alone means that even if it's less effective, the benefits are inexpensive enough to be the best place for my company to do PPC.

The SEO abilities of YouTube are better for me than a embedded player alone

I use JW Media player to control the look and feel and feed my YouTube videos through it. This helps to build the vaule of the channel and focus the energy of the views and social signals. The combo of controling the look with the social power of YouTube is an explosive combo.

If you want to learn more about my successes on YouTube please read this artilce I wrote for ReelSEO:

We actually did this with a couple videos and the results did not really change. Additionally, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison either. When a YT video is clicked, the user will be taken to YT where they will see advertising, potential competitors videos, and other enticing content. If they click on a video that is either self-hosted or professionally hosted and SEO'd, they will be taken back to your website.

I hear it said all the time that video is the future of SEO - it keeps cropping up and then I keep meeting people that have invested loads into video and haven't really got anything to show for it or at least they can't point to anything tangible. I think you've got to be the right kind of business to really make things work for you on YouTube and the reality is most businesses just don't fit into that mould.

YouTube can work for people but I think there is still a long way to go before the costs outweigh the benefits for most businesses. If you can afford to take the hit do it, it's all marketing and has to be good for the brand, but if you're going to do it make sure you run a campaign and keep campaigning, a one off hit in most cases simply won't work.

In my opinion, comparing seo with video is like comparing apples and oranges.

The approach you outlined (putting a teaser on YouTube and the rest of the video on your site) is definitely a valid one and can certainly solve part of the problem.

There are a couple gotchas here, though:

You cannot put the link to your website directly in the video. YouTube's annotations only support internal YouTube links. This means that any external link will have to be in the description which will likely have a much lower clickthrough rate.

It is tough enough to get folks to watch to the end of your video (we're releasing some major new data on this next week). The number of people that will take that next step (click the link and then play the next vide) vs. just continuing to watch will certainly be less.

Having different titles will certainly help avoid duplicate content, but the description, keywords will still likely make the two videos compete from an SEO persepctive.

We have come up with a hybrid YouTube/Wistia approach which we have tried with a number of customers and seems to be working well. It essentially amounts to categorizing your videos into videos you post on YouTube and videos hosted by Wistia on your site. I'm happy to go into more detail if folks are interested.

Im surprised SEO arent all over these video threads... Theres a ton of value here! All SEO ever preaches is: do something your competition is not doing. Create unique content, give value. IMO Video's are not being used by many for SEO, that makes it a niche market.

We generally suggest segmenting content into two categories....content to post on YouTube and content to embed only on your website.

For the YouTube content, we generally recommend things that are more relevant to the general YouTube audience....i.e. entertaining, pertaining to company culture, or general overview material. This will hopefully capture the most searches possible and funnel those people that are engaged back to your site to learn more.

For the content to host strictly on the clients site using Wistia, we recommend the higher value content....instructional content, detailed product content, webinar content, etc. Basically, this is the anything that you wouldn't want to give YouTube SEO credit for. This way, when the user clicks on the thumbnail in a general web search, they will be taken directly to the page on your site where the video is embedded.

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